I've been visiting galleries today on my day off beginning at England & Co to see Remembering Albert Herbert. It was interesting to see early etchings of London in a similar style to but without mythic power and psychological density of the Biblical etchings. Also interesting was the extent to which towards the end of his life the Biblical references fell away and Herbert focussed on relational imagery drawn from youth and early parenthood.
While at England & Co I was also intrigued by two collage constructions with found text from Chris Kenny. Kenny produces, as England & Co's website states, an unexpected kind of poetry with his three-dimensional ‘drawings’ and constructions made from twigs, fragments of maps and strips of found text. Objects or phrases of the same type are mounted on pins and organised in a way that suggests an intention to rationalise the differences between them. The constructions I saw featured fragments of text arranged to form squares or circles and either telling a partial story or making word associations. Being mounted on pins they cast shadows mirroring the squares or circles created by the found text. There is therefore a visual and lingual patterning formed from fragments and yet one that is partial, ephemeral and fragile.
England & Co also regularly feature Outsider Art and while I was in Notting Hill I picked up a copy of the Raw Vision Outsider Art Sourcebook. Produced by the people behind Raw Vision magazine this is a useful introduction to Outsider artists, environments, collections, galleries, publications, and websites.
Walking from Bond Street to Saville Row to see the Garry Fabian Miller exhibition at James Hyman Fine Art, I passed the Halcyon Gallery which is currently showing Bob Dylan's Drawn Blank series. Dylan's art is interesting more for what it reveals or doesn't reveal about him but while there I also saw some lithographs by Marc Chagall and sculptures by Lorenzo Quinn.
Quinn's symbolic sculptures reminded me of the work of Juginder Lamba and Ana Maria Pacheco but with a smoother felicity which is reflected in his choice of materials and which at times displays a sentimentality and lack of originality in his imagery; clasped hands symbolising love and an open hand holding a figure symbolising the hand of God.
What I found most interesting about discovering Quinn's work in this way, was that here was yet another successful artist exhibiting in a central London gallery and enjoying major commissions while exploring significant religious themes in his work. Many such artists seem almost totally ignored by large sections of the Christian Church and yet are successfully raising questions of faith and meaning in so-called 'secular' settings. Their work should be celebrated yet is often ignored.
Time Passage is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of photographs by Fabian Miller ever staged in London and includes some of his most acclaimed photographic series. Fabian Miller explores the elements of light, time and colour in camera-less images produced in his darkroom. His images are created by a long process of exposing light directly onto photographic paper through organic materials and substances. He uses this approach to create luminous windows of colour that range from abstract expressionist stripes and rectangles to contemplative evocations of landscapes.
The gallery blurb notes the spirituality of Fabian Miller's work and again we are encountering an artist with links to Christianity. He was co-curator of The Journey, a search for the role of contemporary art in religious and spiritual life, exhibited at Lincoln Cathedral and chose to work specifically with cruciform imagery in his Petworth series. This is not to imply that there is anything didactic in Fabian Miller's work. His spirituality emerges through a wonderful and wondering engagement with the interaction of light and nature.
Back at home and reading the Church Times I was pleased to see that Hertford stns and the Advent Art Installation both featured in Glyn Paflin's review of the Arts for 2008. Also waiting for me was a review copy of God in the Gallery which aims to explore a Christian embrace of Modern Art. Now that I like the sound of!
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Edmund Rubbra - Fukagawa (Deep River).
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